'You say well. PLATO 'Then we must neither do wrong in return, nor do evil to any man, whatever we may suffer from him. But take care, dear ç Crito, lest you may be making this admission against your real opinion. For I know that this is what very few people think or ever will think. Between those then who have adopted this opinion and those who have not there is no common purpose, but they must necessarily despise each other when they look each at the others' intentions. Therefore do you also consider very carefully whether you share and agree with my opinion, and let us begin our deliberations from this point, that it is never right either to do wrong, or to return wrong, or when evil-entreated to retaliate by rendering evil. Or do you draw back, and not agree d with my first principle? For I have long been of this opinion, and am so still. But if you have formed any other opinion, speak and explain. If, however, you abide by what you held before, listen to the next step. 'I do abide by it, and agree with you. But say on. 'I go on then to state the next point, or rather I ask whether a man ought to do whatever he has admitted to any one to be just, or falsely to abandon it? 'He ought to do it.' Compare with this the saying: 'Render to no man evil for evil'; and this: 'Bless them that curse you: pray for them that despitefully use and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise p. 655 upon the evil and upon the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and on the unjust.' Also this: 'Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we intreat': a passage b which occurs in our sacred Scriptures. The Hebrew prophet also says: 'If I rendered evil to them that rendered evil to me.' And again: 'With them that hate peace I am for peace.' CHAPTER VIII 'BUT you used to boast then that you were not grieved if you c must die, but preferred death, as you said, to banishment; now, 654 d 11 Rom. xii. 17 d 13 Matt. v. 44, 45 b 3 Pa. vii. 4 b 4 Ps. cxx. 7 655 a 3 1 Cor. iv. 13 o Plato, Crito, p. 53 0 PLATO however, you are neither ashamed of those fine sayings, nor pay any respect to us, the laws, but are attempting to destroy us; and you are doing just what the vilest slave would do, in trying to run away contrary to the conditions and agreements on which you consented to be our citizen. In the first place, therefore, answer us this very question, whether we state the truth in asserting that you have agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not only in word; or is it untrue? What are we to say in answer to this, Crito? Must we not admit it? d 'Yes, Socrates, we must. 'Are you not then, they would say, transgressing the covenants and agreements which you made with us, and to which you agreed under no compulsion, nor deception? Nor were you forced to decide too hastily, but for a period of seventy years you were at liberty to go away, if you were not satisfied with us, and if our agreements appeared to you unjust? 'You did not, however, prefer either Lacedaemon or Crete, which you are always saying are well governed, nor any other state, Hellenic nor Barbarian, but you travelled away from p. 658 (sic) Athens less than the lame and the blind and the cripples. So b much more than other Athenians were you in love with the state, and of course with us the laws; for who would like a state without laws? And will you not now abide by your agreements? You will, if you take our advice, Socrates.' CHAPTER IX 'FOR whoever is a corrupter of laws, would be surely thought a corrupter of young and foolish persons. Will you then flee from the well-governed states, and the best-behaved of men? And if you do this, will your life be worth living? Or will you associate with them, and feel no shame in discoursing with them,—and what arguments will you use, dear Socrates? The same as here, that virtue and justice and institutions and laws are the most c precious things for mankind? And do you not think that this conduct of Socrates would be unseemly? You certainly ought to think so. 658 b : Crito, 53 a The Laws still speak 'But you will depart from these regions, and go to Crito's PLATO friends in Thessaly: for there forsooth is the greatest disorder and licence. And perhaps it will please them to hear from you, in what a ridiculous fashion you made your escape from the prison, having wrapped yourself in some disguise, or taken a goatskin, or something else such as runaways usually dress themselves up in, and so transformed your appearance. 'But will there be no one to remark that, being an old man, with probably but a short time left to live, you dared to show so d greedy a love of life in defiance of the highest laws? Perhaps not, if you do not annoy any one: but otherwise, you will have to listen to many things unworthy, dear Socrates, of you. So you will live by cringing to all men, and serving them; and what will you be doing but feasting in Thessaly, as if you had gone abroad to Thessaly for a dinner? And those fine discourses about justice and the other virtues, where will they be? 'But forsooth you wish to live for the sake of your children, that you may bring them up and educate them? 'What then? Will you take them to Thessaly and bring them up and educate them there, making aliens of them, that they may receive this further benefit from you? Or if instead of that they are brought up here, will they be better brought up and educated p. 659 because you are alive though not with them? For your friends will take care of them? They will take care of them then if you are gone away to Thessaly; but if you are gone to the other world, will they not take care of them, if indeed there is any good in those who say that they are your friends? You must surely suppose they will. 'Nay, dear Socrates, listen to us who have reared you, and value neither children, nor life, nor any thing else as of more account than justice, that when you come to the unseen world you may b have all these pleas to offer in your defence to the rulers there. For it is evident that to act in this manner is neither in this life botter or more just or more holy for you or any of yours, nor will it be better for you when you have arrived in the other world. 'But now, if you go hence, you will go as one who has suffered injustice not from us, the laws, but from men. But if you go abroad in this disgraceful manner, returning injury for injury and evil for evil, transgressing your own agreements and covenants PLATO C which you made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least d to wrong, yourself and your friends and country and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and in the other world our brethren, the laws in Hades, will give you no friendly reception, knowing that you have tried your best to destroy us.' CHAPTER X 'PERHAPS therefore some one will say, Are you not ashamed then, Socrates, of having pursued such a course of life, that you are now in danger of being put to death for it? But I should return a just answer to him, You are wrong in what you say, Sir, if you suppose that any man who is of the least good ought to take into account the risk of life or death, instead of looking at this point alone in his actions, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, the works of a good or a bad man. 'For according to your argument the demi-gods who died at p. 660 Troy would be good for nothing, especially the son of Thetis, b who so despised danger in comparison with incurring disgrace, that though his mother, being a goddess, had spoken to him, I suppose, in this way, when he was so eager to kill Hector, O my Son, if you avenge the murder of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you will be killed yourself, for, said she, "On Hector's fate thine own will follow close." And after hearing this he cared little for death and danger, but fearing much more to live as a coward and not avenge his friends, he exclaims: "Would I might die this hour" after inflicting vengeance on the injurious foe, that I remain not here a laughing-stock, "Cumbering the ground, beside the sharp-beaked ships." 659 d Plato, Apology of Socrates, 28 B 660 a 7 Hom. Пl. xviii. 96 'If therefore, O men of Athens, when the leaders whom you chose e PLATO to be my commanders set me in my post at Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and at Delium, or anywhere else, I remained just like any other where they placed me and ran the risk of being killed,—how strangely should I have acted, when the god, as I thought and supposed, ordered me to live the life of a philosopher, examining myself and others, if in this case, through fear either of death or anything else whatever, I should desert my post. 'Strange it would be indeed, and then in truth any one might justly bring me before the court, on the ground that I do d not believe in the existence of gods, since I disobey the oracle, and am afraid of death, and think myself wise when I am not. For to be afraid to die, Sirs, is nothing else than to think oneself to be wise, when one is not: for it is to think that one knows, what one does not know. For no one knows about death even whether it may not be the greatest of all blessings to man; but they fear it as if they certainly knew that it is the greatest of evils. And what is this but that same disgraceful ignorance, for a man to think that he knows what he does not know? 'But I, Sirs, perhaps on this subject also differ from most men in this; and were I to say that I am wiser than another in any respect, it would be in this, that, as I do not know enough about the p. 661 state of things in Hades, so I also think that I do not know. But I do know that to do wrong and to disobey one's superior, whether god or man, is evil and disgraceful. Those evils therefore which I know to be evil I shall always fear and shun, rather than things which, for aught I know, may really be good. 'Therefore not even if you acquit me now, and refuse to believe Anytus, who said that either I ought not to have come into this court at all, or that, since I had come, it was impossible to avoid putting me to death, and told you that, if I should be acquitted, b at once your sons would all be utterly corrupted by practising what Socrates teaches-if in answer to this you should say to me, Socrates, we are not going to be persuaded by Anytus this time, but we acquit you, on this condition however, that you cease to spend your time in this speculation, and in philosophy; and if you be convicted of doing so any more, you will be put to death;-if then, as I said, you were to acquit me on these conditions, I should say to you, O men of Athens, I honour and |